He was safe. They didn’t realize he’d ducked into the manhole. They were probably scouting Third Avenue for him now and they’d give up when they figured they’d lost him.
To play it doubly sure, he edged his way down deeper into the sewer, holding on to the iron brackets with his good hand. The stench of garbage and filthy water reached up to caress his nostrils. He was tempted to move up close to the lid again but it was darker down below and if someone did lift the lid, chances were he wouldn’t be seen if he went deeper.
The walls around him were slimy and wet, and they smelled, too, or at least he thought they did. His nose was no longer capable of determining the direction of the stink. It was all around him, like a soggy vile blanket. He felt nauseous and he didn’t know whether the nausea came from his dripping arm or the dripping slime of the sewer.
He only knew that he was safe here, and that Bugs and the boys were upstairs, and so he descended deeper until the elbow of the sewer was just beneath his feet and he could hear the rush of water loud beneath him.
He was very weary, more weary than he’d been in all his life. The weight of the entire city seemed to press down on him, as if all the concrete and steel were concentrated on this one hole in the asphalt, determined to crush it into the core of the earth.
He hooked his left arm into one of the brackets, and he hung there like a Christ with one arm free. The free arm dangled at his right side, the bandage soaked through now, the blood running down and dropping into the rushing water below.
Drop by drop, it hit the slimy surface of the brown water while Johnny hung from the rusted iron bracket praying no one would lift the manhole cover. Drop by drop, it mingled with the brown water, flowed into the elbow where manhole joined sewer pipe, rushed toward the river, bright red on the brown, rushed with the water carrying the smell of fresh blood.
And the rat clinging to the rotted orange crate lodged in the sewer pipe turned glittering bright eyes toward the manhole opening, and his nostrils twitched as he smelled the blood. His teeth gnashed before he plunged into the water and swam toward the source of the blood.
Marie Trachetti got the news from Hannihan, the cop on the beat. She threw on her high school jacket and went into the streets looking for Johnny.
She had known from the moment Angelo got shot that Johnny would be tagged with it. She had known, and she had sought him then, hoping to warn him, but she had not found him, and the next thing she knew a search was out for him and he was suspected of the killing.
All that was over and done with now. This Ryan fellow had confessed to shooting Angelo, a crime for which he should have been awarded a medal. But Johnny was clear now, and Johnny had to be told, and so Marie took to the streets in search of him.
She did not, in all truth, know where to look for him. Johnny and she did not run in the same circles. She had her friends, and he had his, and except for that run-in with Angelo, their separate social paths hardly ever crossed.
She started looking in the pool parlors and when she had no luck there, she tried the movies. She met some of Johnny’s friends but none of them had seen him, and so she tried all the restaurants, walking up 125th Street and then down Lexington Avenue.
From Lexington Avenue, she walked down to Third, frightened because it was very late at night and because she knew she was an attractive girl in a dark, exotic-looking way. Her brush with Angelo had taught her that.
The sidewalks seemed to be darker than the gutter, and so she stayed in the middle of the street, looking from side to side as she made her way from the corner, hoping to spot Johnny huddled in one of the doorways.
She was wearing high heels, the shoes she wore at her after-school job in the delicatessen. Her heels clattered on the iron top of a manhole cover, sending a loud clicking into the silent night. She did not look down. She continued walking up the street into the blackness.
Johnny did not hear the clicking of his sister’s heels on the manhole cover above him. Johnny was at the moment listening to another sound. The sound was a squeak at first. He looked down curiously. And then the sound was a scraping, and when he looked this time he saw the glow of two pinpoints of light, and he knew he was looking into a rat’s eyes.
He was scared. He was damned scared. It’s one thing tangling with a human, but it’s another to tangle with a rodent, and Johnny had always been afraid of rats, ever since he’d been bitten by a mouse when they lived over on First Avenue.
He started up the iron brackets set into the sewer wall. He started up rapidly, but the rat was fast, too. He screamed aloud when it leaped onto his foot. He could feel it clinging to his shoe. He shook his foot, climbing up closer to the manhole lid all the time, but the rat clung, and it seemed as if every nerve ending in his body had suddenly moved into his foot. He forgot the pain in his arm, and he forgot the rusted rough edges of the brackets as he climbed closer to the lid. He was aware only of the rat’s weight on his foot, of those glittering, pinpointed eyes down below him.
And then the rat began climbing up the tweed of his trousers, and Johnny screamed again, in real fear this time, fear that crackled into his skull. His head banged against the manhole lid, and he rushed up against it frantically, wedging his shoulders against the flat iron surface, trying to move it. He could not budge the cover. He tried it again, and he felt the rat’s claws digging into his trousers, scraping against his flesh.
He tried to scream, but no sound came from his mouth. He pushed upward with his shoulders again, and this time the lid moved a little, and a fine sifting of dirt trickled down onto the back of his neck. He shoved again, and then tried to brush the rat off his leg. The rat clung, snapping at his hand, drawing fresh blood. Johnny’s breath came fast now, crowding into his throat. He shoved at the cover and it moved aside, and the light from the street splashed down into the manhole, illuminating the rat.
It was a big animal, nine inches or so not counting the tail. It was covered with matted, filthy fur and the sight of the rat made Johnny’s flesh crawl. But the manhole cover was off now and he thrust his head above the surface of the street, not caring about Bugs or his friends, not caring about anything now, wanting only to get away.
The rat pounced onto his arm, its teeth sinking into the sodden bandage. Johnny flipped up onto the asphalt and the rat clung, only now Johnny didn’t have to worry about clinging to an iron bracket. He balled his left fist, terror shrieking inside him, and brought it down on the rat’s head. The rat clung fiercely.
He got to his feet and ran across the street, stopping alongside the brick wall of a building. And then he began battering the bleeding arm against the brick, over and over again, slamming the tenacious rat against the wall.
And at last the rat’s jaws loosened and it fell away to the pavement, a whimpering ball of fur with a long, twitching tail. He did not look down at the rat. He was crying now, crying as he’d never cried in his life. He ran up the street, sobbing and wondering why he’d had to run all his life, all his damn life.
And then he stopped running and fell to the pavement, and blackness closed in on him.
It was Marie who found him ten minutes later as she made her way down the street. It was she who carried him home, half dragging him, half pulling him. It was she who sent for the doctor.
The doctor treated and bandaged his arm, and Johnny slept all that night and through the next day.
Marie and Johnny’s parents were by his bedside when he awoke, and the first thing he said was, “Why do I have to keep running? Why?”
And because they thought he was referring to Angelo’s death, they said, “The police found the killer, Johnny. It’s all right now. It’s all right.”